Who owns me?

The art of self ownership.

The art of self-ownership. Who owns me? It may sound like a strange question… but really... Can anyone own me? Can I even own myself? Self-ownership implies that one own's oneself but not in the way that reduces an individual to property; it's symbolic. It is expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity and be the exclusive controller of his own body and life. Self-ownership implies that one has an exclusive right to make one's own choices and adopt one's own values (within the sphere of one's own rights) and act upon them. Self-ownership is the right to live for one's own sake and have no obligations independent of a contract. The Philosophy of Liberty has the foundation of Individualism: in the material world, each individual owns himself. This means merely, that no human agency may employ violence or physical force to compel us to fulfill our duty. The attitudes of others may hold us accountable by disapproving or withdrawing friendship, but absent divine intervention we are not subject to physical force or violence. Just as one need not believe in a god to realize that creation happened, one need not believe in a god to realize humans have a natural right to self-ownership and other rights that derive from simply being human. The State does not own us, society does not own us, and no government owns us - as far as all those entities are concerned, we own ourselves.